SUPERCHARGED Off-Grid Solar Power System

there's our little off-grid cabin and here is our power system there it is three kilowatts of solar and it's not enough anymore Rose wants more okay so we're gonna need to supercharge our solar power system and Rose with your handy dandy wires she's gonna help us do that right now it all comes down to fridges and freezers Rose just plugged in a cheese cooler and it basically it basically broke the bank it's just like this we run a ton of normal stuff [Music] none of that matters it's all about the fridges and freezers because the fridges and freezers run all day long [Music] [Music] we've got all these Lithium-ion batteries four of them at 48 volt they're fantastic this is the battery monitor it's my favorite electrical thing in here this is the Magnuson inverter and it's what is it 4400 VA this is the solar charge controller it's an old one zantrex and it is mppt6150 and of course then it all just goes to a normal electrical panel the MPP stands for maximum PowerPoint the 60 means 60 amps that's all it can do but we'll come back to that and 150 is its open uh open circuit voltage so it can handle 150 volts on the input you might say to yourself okay 60 amps that's all I can put in and that's all I can get out of this zantrex and so 60 amps at roughly 50 volts that's three kilowatts that's all I can do and I have three kilowatts of solar right now so it's it I'm maxed there's nothing I can do that's a lie you can I always do better yeah so you know what we're gonna do we're gonna supercharge this thing we are gonna overdrive this thing and it's okay all the professionals do this and you should do this too if you've got a solar power system you should overdrive it 10 years ago maybe not and I'll I can maybe explain why but it really comes down to the cost of everything panels are cheap like borsche so just buy like a ton of panels overdrive the system also if you just have a system and you slowly want to build it up you don't want to replace everything so we'll get to that and I'm going to show you once we add a few more panels we're going to increase the size of this thing by 20 the solar array how much extra power does that add because will I get the full 20 technically I shouldn't be able to because this thing won't let it right it is only three kilowatt but I am going to get a bunch more power and I hope to do like a cool little graph and it's like super mathy so I'll do that on my own time and then just show you the numbers okay but what do we actually have to do yes we gotta run some wires we gotta add a new breaker into here and look it's almost like I thought of this 10 years ago because we got one empty spot there and we got a couple more panels and we're gonna put them on the roof and since I'm filming Rose is gonna do it just like Kezia said filming while you do all the work is way better yeah foreign [Music] okay how are we gonna do this and film huh where all the helpers girls we need them the girls are getting big like they go places on their own now okay all right it sucks I know it's so sad and exhausting for us we won't see it but if I fall it'll hear the thud they're heavy I know how am I gonna get that up for you what would be good is if you just like kind of leaned it on the ladder and then split it up you know and let the ladder support the top of it now what oh yeah this is a little bit of a I could have made a bigger doorway yeah goodness good job oh yeah that's easier you made it I made it you gonna help me up oh yeah oh look at all the moss in there yeah this is the north facing side it's all just wet and Molly look we're gonna have blueberries or those huckleberries no way huckleberries on the roof that is awesome people don't even know how to like rape like I had yeah domesticate huckleberries are you ready for some photovoltaic facts I'll put it this way photovoltaics are kind of polite if you want to receive power from them they will give it to you but if you're like ah no thanks then they're like okay I'll just wait here no problem they do kind of get their voltage up a little bit but but other than that they're just cool to not send the power so I'll show you it is not particularly sunny right now no but solar panels will still put out power in this type of stuff basically there should be an amp for more right yeah clearly like there's no amps there's no current coming out of here right see that they can produce the power but they don't need to this isn't a dangerous situation although don't take any of this as advice for safety because that's not what we're we're not here for safety so look I'm gonna put this on DC I'll show you something 41.6 volts so this is the open circuit voltage because it's open circuit but this is where it gets cool put it on amps all right now there's no amps right right you can't have amps with an open circuit right but what if I close the circuit with the ammeter like a short circuit this is crazy oh 2.8 I should get out the toaster or something I know we could that would take a long time this is the key to supercharging your solar power system is you can provide excess solar panels to your system and as long as you don't over voltage your charge controller I'll get it just a second it almost sounds like I'm giving you advice I'm definitely not giving you advice I am going to supercharge my solar charge controller by giving it 20 extra solar so at the very peak of every day when the sun's perfect it'll basically limit the power and just like you saw the the panel is okay not pushing power oh I got it okay I got one there we go easy perfect you're like an electrician now so we are just up there on the other side of the wall but we got it dangling down and see if we can poke it through here that's not what you would call robust hey oh it looks dangerous in there yeah looks like I never put the strainer Leaf in right here so this is clearly just a temporary connection for your boat eight years we should tie wrap these cables and secure them so they don't dangle around and then uh did that did you find that amusing yeah tie wrap them there sounded so Jeff I thought you were what what we'll just tie wrap that there tie wrap that on I don't get it it's all good are you making fun of me for tie wrapping no not at all nope you are a little bit why I don't know you love tie wraps that's right look you gotta tie wrap everything I wasn't really making time that's what we do I was just bundle things together snickering to myself because you love tie wraps that's okay okay well get me some tie wraps alrighty then let's do this okay okay that is neatly tie wrapped not like rose cares or anything I love tie wraps me too I know good grief I guess I can land this guy and that she just should just clip on that DIN rail there we go see is that easy needed just needed to do that now you just have to tighten them all up this is not this is not this is not a safety video or a how-to new this is what I'm doing this could be the last video I ever make I could die right now everyone's got to go at some point and if I'm gonna go I'm gonna go making sure that my wife has a cheese fridge good news what's that we get to put on more time wraps foreign get her to uh never mind okay so I'm gonna connect this one to the positive from this panel so that's putting them that's putting them in series so I can't remember did we leave those wires like disconnected did you say hang it in there in the air yeah I think so yeah so normally this would be a bad idea so one of these is positive with respect to the other oh this guy about a 50 50 chance there we go negative 80 volts this is my positive fancy strippers today okay 227 Watts 215 but if I flip this in it should go up by 20 percent you ready yeah oh I went up way more than 20 percent wow it went up like 50 percent and that's because those panels are flat and the other ones are standing up let's lay the other one's down I should we we should lay those ones down but we should also invent a new system where they're all together and I want to move them back from the edge right yeah um The Challenge we have up there for those of you that are wondering why I'm making it so difficult it's because any surface like I want to put them on my roof but it's a flat roof and it'll have three to four feet of snow in the winter and I want them vertical three feet off the ground 40 feet long six feet tall it's like a huge sale and to put them that high you know I'm gonna think about it it's a 285 Watts turned off you're done we over built the solar panel the solar array and on paper you'd be like it's too much for the inverter but the reality is it's only too much for the inverter on like magical moments on magical days in the year and the whole rest of the time I'm still I'm gonna give up increase in power right you saw that this added power but what I want to do is take a few points through the day and build the graph because then we can use graph paper and we can graph the power through the day and each time we measure it we'll measure it with and then without the new panels so we can see exactly how much power we're adding on an average day and you're going to want to see that because that's like that's like the cold hard facts so that's what we're gonna do next it's a rainy one but that won't stop us from getting you the data rainy day we're at 79 percent and over here look at that tiny amount of power 338 Watts that's with our new panel if I switch it out 350 to 240 just like that but I'm not going to stop today I'm going to show you what today's looks like and then tomorrow it's probably going to be sunny so we'll measure it again tomorrow and we'll show you and then you'll know everything okay this is what I started doing see all that power no it's way down here that was a very dark day it was a non-sunny in our history what I was gonna do was show you a very simple graph the old system would have been in blue and it Peaks at about three kilowatts and comes back down and the new system is just 20 percent more but then oh it can't get past three kilowatts because of the the charger the limitation of the solar charger so it would just sit there and then it would keep coming down so you would get all this extra power that's the gap between the lines most of the day and just not here what ensued was totally different and so now it's been a marathon of math which is perfect when your kids are homeschooled let's look at this so you saw my first day and then this is the next day got off to a good start and then what happened here this is what happens when the when the battery is fully charged and then you can't charge anymore and it just is powering the load whatever loads we plug in that's what it's powering the next day was cloudy all morning and then oh the sun came out in the afternoon and then the next day oh it happened again charging Great Guns got up to around 2 000 watts and then boom batteries charged so we did one more test and we got smart we we kept the batteries from charging so we turned off the panels in the meantime and this is what I got another imperfect day so this starts off great and then it gets cloudy and then it gets uncloudy and then it gets cloudy all afternoon and then it gets sunny again right at about four o'clock so you can imagine though on a perfectly sunny day this would go way up and down right here in hindsight this is actually a great lesson solar is not the way you think it is and the total increase from the old system of the new system 16 percent it was reasonable we added 20 more panels we didn't quite get the whole 20 so this was more of an average summer day and here it is the total energy we gained in the day 17.7 kilowatt hours and on this day I calculated a 13 increase so we supercharged the solar system and it worked fabulous and the girls got to do some super awesome math home school yeah and Rose gets to plug in her cheese fridge and basically I make out like a hero we also laid the panels down into their summer setting it is maybe nine o'clock in the evening I think there's technically some sun on those panels probably getting 100 Watts out of all that you know when you hug your textbook like that reminds me of high school I knew you were gonna say that that was a long time but I knew even back then that you were the one and You're Still the One it won't blow this thing up when if it's got too much power at least mine I don't know about yours yours could totally blow up

Channel: Gridlessness

Views: 102,679

Keywords: off grid solar power, off-grid solar power, off grid solar power system, DIY off-grid solar, off grid homestead, off-grid homestead

Id: F733EbjryhM

Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 25 2023